Corey Burton: …Les Perkins, who founded Disney Character Voices, was looking for a Ludwig Von Drake at the time. I guess Paul Frees, I don’t know if he’d passed away or he was just living up north and wasn’t coming down to do much work, and he apparently had offered this role to a number of actors, I guess I shouldn’t say who…and he asked me like three times and I said “Well, I can’t do that, that’s Paul Frees.�? He’s the most brilliant genius of character voices ever … But yes, so he insisted. He said “No, I know you can do this.�?

And I worked on it and I worked on it. [Shakes head.] And boy, it just wasn’t getting close. And then suddenly. I don’t remember how, it must’ve sped up or slowed down the tapes, and wait a minute, that laugh sounds like there’s helium in it. It’s slightly sped up, isn’t it! And the voice is [deep voice] actually pitched down there [high voice] and it come out like this. It’s just sped up slightly. That gives it this magical, funny quality. So that was the trick, and then it took me like seven additional years to actually learn the layers of the character and learn to ad lib as Ludwig.

And really, you know you can’t write for that character. I get scripts and I go “Oh no, no, he doesn’t talk that way�? and I have to just kind of think about it, and “How would he say this?�? … You have to actually do the voice to know the words that he would choose. Everything is sort of inside out.

Tony Anselmo: So do you do that speed or do they speed it up for you?

Corey Burton: It’s always sped up a bit. I insist on it. Sometimes they say “Can’t you just do it high?�? Well, it doesn’t sound the same.

Wayne Allwine: Corey and I spoke about this last week. He had preceded us into a session. And we talked about what it’s like to do a character, in his case like Ludwig, and so much of what you hear is right off the top of his head. And what you do as the actor is you find the voice, and then you stand back and don’t get in its way. Because it almost taps into part of the brain that is just freeform. You can overthink a role.

Corey Burton: That’s what I learned from the old radio actors. I was lucky enough to work with most of the classic radio actors from the 1940s because of my connection with Daws Butler and the workshop. So I was this kid, yes, the Heartbeat Theater, Sears, the Mutual Radio Theater, and I had the craft. I knew what at that time was really a lost art. And from the old-timers I learned “Oh, they disappear.�? The character performs the part. They don’t even think about it usually.

Eddie Carroll: And usually what happens when your character is there and like Wayne said you get out of its way. It’s amazing how then your god-center, your energy-center, your whatever it is in there, the character literally allows, leads you and then you begin the character, you start thinking as the character.

Corey Burton: They know what to do.

Eddie Carroll: They know what to do. Because then you look at dialogue, you know identically how to phrase that and say “This word is out and that word is out�? because the character now tells you how it should be spoken correctly. And that’s what always amazes me watching all of my contemporaries work the same way. We all get touched by that same muse inside of us that passes through.

Corey Burton: The golden rule of Daws Butler’s workshop was these are not voices, they’re characters. And so many people want to get into the business and they do what one guy refers to as voice distortions. [Different voices] And you’re just making your voice like this or like this or like that and that’s not a character. And it’s dull and it’s annoying and it’s got no life to it.